


if you wait around

by shineyma



Series: where we belong [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe of an Alternate Universe, F/M, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 10:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22848997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: Some Grants are more patient than others. Some Jemmas are less angry. It's a big multiverse, you know.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Grant Ward
Series: where we belong [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/962367
Comments: 20
Kudos: 93





	if you wait around

**Author's Note:**

> Ta-da! Week EIGHT down!!! With major thanks to JD for helping me find new inspiration after I started to hate my initial inspiration mid-fic last night.
> 
> Please be aware this fic contains **mentions of abuse**. Nothing on-screen and the mentions aren't graphic or detailed at all, but the reference is there.
> 
> Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review! <3

Grant comes running, gun at the ready, at Jemma’s surprised shout—only to freeze two steps past the door.

“What the _fuck_?”

“My sentiments exactly,” she agrees.

“Are you doing this?” he asks, half-suspicious and half-hopeful. Presumably because he, like Jemma herself, has no idea what to do about it.

“No,” she says, and realizes a moment too late that it was a prime opportunity to insult him. Oh, well. “I have no idea how it’s even possible.”

She does a slow circle of the strange blue cloud in the middle of the room, studying it from all angles. There’s no immediately obvious source—no mechanical equipment like a fog machine, no chemicals at hand to cause a reaction. And there was no warning to its forming, either. One moment there was nothing; the next, she looked up from her book to find it swirling into existence out of nothing.

It would be fascinating if it weren’t so worrisome.

Actually, it’s fascinating anyway.

In her circling, she passes too closely to Grant. He reaches out, catches her arm, and drags her behind him.

“ _Grant_ ,” she begins to protest…only to be cut off by a sudden clap of thunder and a blinding flash. For a moment, all she can do is blink the spots out of her eyes.

Once her vision clears, all she can do is gape.

“Oh, nice,” Grant— _another_ Grant, one entirely separate from the man who’s forced her into the corner beside the door—says. “Now this is more like it.”

“Don’t start,” the Jemma standing beside him warns. She looks like an agent, dressed all in tac gear and with that particular stance that suggests readiness to face whatever the world might throw at her.

In her pretty pastel jumper and faded blue jeans, Jemma feels lifetimes—worlds—away from that sort of dangerous demeanor. If she let it, the contrast could distract her from the matter at hand.

So she doesn’t let it. “Who are you?”

“And what do you want?” Grant demands on her heels.

“Calm down,” the other him says soothingly. “We’re not here to steal your…” He squints thoughtfully at Jemma. “…girlfriend? Wife?”

Grant’s “Girlfriend” overlaps with Jemma’s “ _Prisoner_ ” and earns a raised eyebrow from the other him.

The other Jemma’s reaction is much less subdued. She straightens, eyes narrowing, and draws a gun from the holster on her hip. In the time it takes Jemma to process the incongruity (it’s not, it’s _not_ an incongruity, she _knows_ how to use a gun, she’s shot plenty, it’s not out of character at all—), the gun is aimed squarely at Grant.

“Do I need to shoot him?” she asks evenly.

The “ _No!_ ” is torn out of Jemma, ripped from her throat by some third version of her—the weakest one, for whom Grant was the only comfort in a cold, cruel world. It’s not Jemma who says it, any more than it’s her who shoves past Grant to place herself firmly between him and the gun.

But once she realizes what she’s said and done, she lets it stand.

Grant is tense behind her, ready to spring into motion but momentarily frozen—because of the gun, she realizes. He won’t risk startling the other her into shooting, no matter how much he wants to drag her back out of the line of fire.

The other her’s eyes narrow further. “Stockholm syndrome?”

“Looks more like denial to me,” the other Grant says cheerfully. “Put the gun away, you know you don’t need it.”

“I know no such thing,” she snaps. “Look at her!”

The other Grant’s smile fades a bit as he obeys.

“You do look rough,” he says, a touch apologetically, to her. Then he raises his gaze to meet…his own. “What the hell, man?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Grant says lowly. “In fact, I will: what the hell? Who are you and what do you want?”

There’s a small, barely discernable thread of fear beneath the words. If Jemma didn’t know him so well, she’d never detect it. As it is, she does—and knows its source exactly.

“We’re not still in the Framework, are we?” she asks. A bit tremulously, she fears.

Their doubles flinch.

“No,” the other Jemma says at once. “No, this is the real world.”

“Cross our hearts,” the other Grant adds, doing so. “You’re awake and we’re just as human as you are.”

They could be lying, of course, but Jemma relaxes a bit anyway. She blames it on her Framework self—that weak, treacherous wretch can’t help but trust Grant. Even an inexplicable double of Grant who appeared from a strange cloud in the middle of her bedroom, apparently.

“Good to know,” her Grant says. He’s still tense as a live wire. “But if it’s not the Framework, then…?”

“The short version,” the other her says, “is that in our universe—wait. Do you know who Hive is?”

Behind her, Grant makes an annoyed sound. Jemma manages to hold one of her own back, but can’t quite help making a face.

“I think that’s a yes,” the other Grant says wryly.

“Unfortunately,” Jemma confirms.

“All right,” her double says. “In that case, an even shorter version: Hive got his hands on the Darkhold and tried to use it to force me to return his feelings.”

Jemma’s blood turns to ice. Behind her, Grant moves closer, but even he can’t warm her. “His _what_?”

“Oh, wasn’t your version obsessed with you?” The other her is visibly envious. “Well, ours is—he’s determined to have me at all costs, whether I like it or not.”

She doesn’t know what it has to do with why they’re here, but the story is familiar. Too familiar.

Weak at heart and chilled to the bone, for the first time in weeks, Jemma doesn’t fight the instinct that takes over. She turns into Grant’s waiting arms and lets his embrace calm and comfort her—sinks into his strength and breathes in his scent and doesn’t resist the sense of safety they invoke.

It helps, a little. She almost—almost—wishes it didn’t.

“I…do not like that reaction,” the other Grant announces after a moment of surprised silence.

Jemma’s Grant wraps a firm hand around the back of her neck, massaging away the tension there. “Yeah. That determination sounded a little too familiar.”

“He was obsessed with you in the Framework?” the other Jemma guesses.

“Not Hive,” Grant says. “Fitz.”

The other him groans. “Oh, _him_.”

Jemma doesn’t want to talk about the Framework. She doesn’t want to _think_ about the Framework. And finding reassurance in Grant’s arms can only ever remind her of that horrid place, so (after a bracing breath) she pushes away from him and faces their doubles once more.

To her relief, the embrace seems to have eased at least a little of her double’s suspicions; she’s finally lowered the gun.

“You still haven’t explained anything,” she says, ignoring their speculative and concerned looks.

“Right,” her double says. “So Hive attempted to use a—something he found in the Darkhold to force me to return his feelings.”

“It was a spell,” the other Grant stage whispers.

“But it failed,” the other Jemma continues, ignoring him. “Quite spectacularly, I’m afraid. It’s caused a cascading sort of reaction in which the walls between universes are beginning to unravel. We’re fixing them.”

“Really?” Jemma asks. Her mind boggles at the implications—proof that alternate universes ( _real_ alternate universes, not just artificial realities) exist, that they’re connected to some degree, that the separation between them has a physical (metaphysical?) existence which can be affected (both damaged _and_ repaired!)—and, once that starts to sink in, the potential enormity of the task. “Not _every_ universe, I hope?”

That would take a _lifetime_. Theoretically, at least.

“No,” her double assures her. “Once we fix the walls in a particular universe, the walls of neighboring—if you’ll forgive the term—universes are strengthened as well. We should eventually reach a point of critical mass, after which the multiverse will be able to repair itself.”

Jemma’s Grant nudges her. “Is this at all possible?”

“A few weeks ago, I might have said no,” she admits. “But having experienced the power of the Darkhold myself, I’m inclined to believe it.”

That, and she simply couldn’t bear it if it turned out they were still in the Framework. That’s one revelation she just wouldn’t survive. Better to take their visitors at their word than contemplate the alternative.

“Yeah,” Grant sighs. “The gift that keeps on fucking giving, isn’t it?”

It truly is. As though one set of nightmares weren’t enough; now she’ll also be haunted by thoughts of Hive obsessed with her _and_ the imminent collapse of the multiverse.

She really, really wishes they’d never heard of that bloody book.

“If that’s settled,” her double says a touch dangerously, “I’d like to return to the question of whether you’re Ward’s prisoner or his girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend,” Grant says immediately. “Definitely girlfriend.”

“I am _not_ your girlfriend,” Jemma protests—but even to her own ears, it’s weak. _She’s_ weak. Her Framework self is always there, a constant whisper in the back of her mind that makes it so hard to remember Grant is the enemy. She can’t even remember not to call him Grant.

And as for the real her…

She knows she’ll never be able to look at Fitz again without seeing Leopold. The memory of terror and pain will always be there to swamp her. There was a brief moment—a scant handful of seconds—when she first awoke in that underwater base in which she was able to grasp his hand in relief, but as soon as her memories aligned themselves—

“You kidnapped me,” she reminds Grant, wrenching her thoughts back to the present.

He rolls his eyes in fond exasperation, but the other Jemma doesn’t take it so lightly. She raises her gun a bit once more—not so high as to actually aim it at Grant, but enough to imply the threat. Jemma inches back in front of him.

“You’re going to let her go before we leave,” her double says, “or I will shoot you in the face.”

The words are flat and deadly and so calm as to make Jemma shudder.

Grant, on the other hand, only appears amused.

“Now there’s a face I haven’t seen in a while,” he says fondly. “You’re so cute when you’re plotting murder.” He slings an arm around Jemma’s shoulders, leaning in close. “Remember that time you tried to splinter bomb me?”

“You too?” the other Grant asks with exaggerated surprise. He shakes his head at his own Jemma. “You’re always so _violent_. What did I ever do to you?”

The other Jemma gives him a flatly exasperated look and says something in return—something about the medpod, Jemma thinks, but she can’t be sure. She can’t hear very well over the ringing in her ears.

She’d actually forgotten about the splinter bomb. About her determination in the Arctic to see Grant dead—to protect her team from whatever he was plotting. How she killed Bakshi instead and never shed a tear for the death, only the failure.

How that failure left him alive to kidnap and torture Bobbi—and how she swore to herself that she’d actually kill him the next time they met.

Instead…

“Shut up,” the other Jemma snaps at her Grant before turning back to Jemma’s. “And you—I hope you know I’m entirely serious. I won’t leave Jemma as your prisoner. Your choices are to let her go or die.”

Grant rolls his eyes again, less fondly this time. “She’s not my prisoner.”

“You kidnapped me,” Jemma says again. “And you’ve stopped my every attempt to leave. That clearly makes me your prisoner.”

“No,” he says slowly, “that makes you too noble for your own good. We both know you don’t actually _want_ to go back to SHIELD. You just feel like you have to.” He squeezes her shoulder—deliberately or not—right over the scar the LMD version of Fitz left there. “I’m not holding you prisoner, sweetheart, I’m protecting you from yourself.”

She’d love to counter that…but the truth is, he’s right. She has a duty to return to SHIELD, but no actual desire. She doesn’t think she could face the team, not after what happened in the underwater base.

They’d push her to reconcile with Fitz. They’d have the best of intentions, of course—she _knows_ they love her and want what’s best for her. It’s just that they’re all so convinced that’s Fitz.

And with her Framework self still so present, so influential, she fears she wouldn’t be able to resist the well-meaning pressure. She’d buckle beneath their encouragement and take Fitz back.

She’d be miserable and terrified. She’d never sleep again.

(She’d miss Grant.)

“You’ve no right,” she says to distract herself—but _herself_ , judging by the way the other Jemma’s eyes narrow, is only made suspicious.

“What happened in the Framework?” she asks. “What did Fitz _do_?”

Jemma looks away.

“Jemma,” her double demands.

Grant’s arm slides from around her shoulders to across her collarbones and tugs, pulling her back until she hits his chest and he’s hugging her from behind. Comforting her, supporting her, but not confining her.

She doesn’t have the will—or even the desire—to resist it.

“She doesn’t have to tell you if she doesn’t want to.”

He sounds dangerous and threatening. It’s a sign of the damage the Framework did to her, surely, that she finds it sweet. And that with his reassuring bulk behind her, she’s able to meet her own eyes and say, “He abused me.”

The other Jemma draws in a sharp breath. “ _Fitz_?”

“Mm.” Jemma looks away from her own horrified face, sees the murderous look on the other Grant’s, and lets her gaze drop.

She’ll give Grant this, he has impeccable taste. The hardwood in this apartment is lovely.

“He asked me out several times while we were at the Academy,” she informs said hardwood. “When I continued to reject him, he got his father to arrange a marriage between us. That was common there, in the Framework, parents arranging marriages for their children. My parents didn’t give it a second thought.”

Grant mutters something uncomplimentary. His Framework self deeply resented her parents without ever so much as laying eyes on them.

“It wasn’t—it wasn’t awful at first,” she continues, propelled by her Framework self’s compulsion to defend him. “He was, he tried to be romantic. But he always resented that he’d had to force me to marry him. And when the uprising came and I rejected Hydra the way I’d rejected him…”

As she trails off, Grant’s arms tighten around her. It shouldn’t be comforting, but it is. She relaxes into it, lets him take her weight, and deliberately doesn’t look to see how their doubles might react.

“And that’s why I’m not holding you prisoner,” he tells her after a minute. “I’m _compromising_.”

She sighs. “Kidnapping is not a compromise.”

“Sure it is,” he says. “You didn’t want me to kill Fitz and I didn’t want him within a hundred fucking miles of you. Now here you are and he’s alive. We both got what we wanted.”

“Sounds like a compromise to me,” the other Grant agrees.

“You’re ridiculous,” the other Jemma says, and then asks, “And how did you come into this at all?”

That, Jemma presumes, is aimed at Grant. Both from context and because she can almost physically feel the smugness begin to radiate from him.

“We were having an affair,” he says brightly. “Sneaking around behind the doc—behind Fitz’s back.”

The other Grant laughs. A lot.

“Stop it,” the other Jemma demands. “Shut _up_!”

“No way,” he crows. “This is _amazing_ , I _love_ it—”

“I was _abused_ , you berk!” His Jemma snaps, and Jemma finally looks at them just in time to catch her smacking his arm. “There’s nothing funny about that!”

He sobers immediately.

“No,” he agrees, “there isn’t.” He pauses, thoughtful. “And since _I_ haven’t made any promises not to kill Fitz…”

“No,” Jemma says in concert with her other self.

“It wasn’t his fault,” she continues alone. “He was brainwashed by the Framework. When we woke up and regained our memories, he—he felt awful.”

Awful is an understatement. As hard as she’s tried, she hasn’t yet been able to forget that first moment—when everything sank in and she recoiled from him, the look of horror and guilt that overtook his concern cut right through her heart.

He was nearly hyperventilating as he backed away and apologized. And when Grant woke and talked about killing him, he didn’t even protest. He was just ready to accept it—to die for actions he’d had no control over.

“I’d fucking hope so,” the other Grant mutters, pulling her abruptly from her recollections. “But still—”

“But nothing,” his Jemma says. “Fitz isn’t our concern, Jemma is. And the other you, I suppose.” She eyes them. “You woke up together and with Fitz?”

“With the whole team,” Jemma corrects.

The other her appears taken aback. “How on Earth did he manage to kidnap you with the entire team right there?”

“Wasn’t kidnapping, remember?” Grant’s double asks. Usually it would be Jemma’s own Grant’s line, but he’s suspiciously silent. For all of his teasing and pushing, he never rubs that moment in her face. (Beyond insisting it wasn’t kidnapping, of course.)

Everyone was disoriented after regaining consciousness. She doesn’t think they even realized Grant was _there_ until he began threatening Fitz. Once they did, though…

“They were going to kill him,” she says. She doesn’t really intend to, it just…slips out. “Grant, I mean. But I—I—”

“You didn’t want him dead,” her double says, face softening into something like understanding.

Jemma seizes on that. Understanding—it’s all she’s wanted. The team was horrified when she placed herself between them and Grant, when she begged them not to kill him. They didn’t know what she’d been through, what Grant _meant_.

“The Framework was hell,” she says, “and Grant was my only comfort there. I couldn’t just let them…I know he’s done terrible things, but…”

Grant squeezes her slightly—in comfort or in thanks, she’s not certain—as she trails off.

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” the other Jemma says, which is something of a change. Her tone is the gentlest it’s yet been. “I’m not here to judge you. I just want to know you’re safe. This isn’t the first universe we’ve visited where you were a prisoner, and some of the others were in awful situations.”

“Yeah,” Grant’s double says. “Like the universe we just came from.”

Her double’s soft expression hardens into annoyance. “Ward—”

“This creepy space pirate was keeping you as a _sex slave_ ,” he tells Jemma. “It was seriously messed up.”

“ _Pretending_ ,” Jemma’s double corrects swiftly as she recoils. “They were _pretending_ that she was his sex slave in order to spy on the Kree. That is _not_ the same thing. And that ‘space pirate’ happened to be the _love of my life_ , so—”

“Um, rude,” he interrupts. “ _I_ am clearly the love of your life.”

Jemma’s double sputters.

“Seriously, Simmons,” he says. “We’ve been to a hundred and twenty-three universes and we’re together in a hundred and two of them. Just accept it already.”

“One hundred and two?” she demands. “Last time it was one hundred! Even _if_ we accept she’s his girlfriend and not his prisoner—which I haven’t yet—that would still only make this one hundred and one!”

“Nooooo,” he draws out. “One hundred and two. The last hundred, plus the Framework where they were having an affair, plus—“

“The Framework does _not_ count,” she snaps.

“Totally does.”

“It _wasn’t real_ , it was an artificial reality—”

“Real,” Grant’s double sing-songs.

Perhaps it’s the lightness of the banter, the lack of real enmity, or perhaps it’s the news that their doubles have visited one _hundred_ other universes where they’re a couple. Either way, something in Jemma—some fear of judgment or condemnation, perhaps—loosens.

It drives her to confess, “It wasn’t a kidnapping.”

Grant draws in a slow breath. Their doubles stop arguing.

“What was that, sweetheart?” the other Grant asks.

The endearment takes her somewhat aback, but…it’s nice. The fondness in his face isn’t quite the same as the way her own Grant regards her, but it’s fondness nonetheless. She doesn’t know _why_ it’s so heartening to be addressed with such clear affection by another version of Grant, but it truly is.

It gives her the strength to repeat, “It wasn’t a kidnapping.” She takes a deep breath and looks to her other self. “We woke in an underwater base. After I convinced the team not to kill Grant, there was—well, I’ll spare you the details, but the important part is that the base started to flood. We had to run. And we were under attack at the same time, so it was…chaotic. I used the confusion to—to deliberately follow Grant onto his quinjet instead of the team’s.”

Grant is radiating smugness again, of course, but he doesn’t comment. He only kisses her temple and holds her tighter still.

Because he doesn’t comment—because he doesn’t rub it in, now or ever, because he’s let her accuse him of kidnapping and never once thrown that in her face—she keeps her own comment to herself. She _could_ point out that they’re in an anonymous apartment, a safehouse, instead of his Hydra’s headquarters. She _could_ point out that Grant, in his way, is just as conflicted as she is—caught between the agent of SHIELD his Framework counterpart was and the head of Hydra his real-world self is supposed to be.

But she appreciates that the conflict is there, and—her own reluctance to return to SHIELD aside—has her hopes on how the struggle might end. So, as ever, she appreciates it in silence.

Their doubles are less reticent.

“Excellent choice, sweetheart,” the other Grant says earnestly. “You made the right deci— _ow_.”

His Jemma removes her elbow from his ribs. “Stop calling her sweetheart.”

“Why?” he asks. “Does it make you jealous, _sweetheart_?”

“Do _not_ ,” she snaps.

“I think it does,” he says in a tone of dawning realization. “That’s why you got so mad four universes ago— _and_ why you wouldn’t let me have that threesome with the other you and Skye! You were _jealous_!”

…Threesome with her and Skye? (Also, Skye? Did their version never discover her real name, or does she simply not use it? Or was it that particular universe’s version who preferred Skye?)

Jemma has _so many_ questions.

Before she can ask any of them, however, her double finally holsters her gun in favor of drawing a blue…something out of her backpack. It looks oddly like an early version mobile phone even _before_ she extends an antenna from the top.

“I am not jealous,” she says, very calmly and evenly. The tone is rather belied by the force with which she presses a button on the device. “Jemma, can I take this revelation to mean that you’re truly not in need of rescue?”

Having made the larger confession, it’s easier than she would have expected to admit, “No. I’m not.”

“Good,” her double says. “Then we’re leaving.”

“You are _so jealous_ ,” the other Grant crows. “You don’t want me dead, you get jealous over me calling other yous sweetheart—admit it, I am _so_ the love of your life.”

“I _will_ leave you in this universe,” his Jemma threatens. “Shut it, Ward.”

He gives her a slow, smug smile. “You know how to make me.”

“No,” she says at once. “That was a mistake and it is _never_ happening again. Ever.”

“Never say never, sweetheart,” he advises.

“ _Never_ ,” she says, slowly and deliberately.

“They’re adorable,” Jemma’s Grant murmurs in her ear. “They remind me of us, except angrier.”

“They are a bit tempestuous,” Jemma murmurs back. For all of her defensive insistence that she’s a prisoner, their coexistence has actually been quite peaceful. On those occasions she snaps at or argues with him, it takes deliberate effort to maintain her anger. “And violent.”

The last bit she adds as her double whacks his in the arm with her strange blue device.

“She’s in denial,” Grant says. “So sad.” He kisses her cheek sweetly. “So glad you’re finally over yours.”

“Are you over _yours_ yet?” she asks, and takes his offended silence as a no. “Very well. I can wait.”

Their doubles’ escalating argument is interrupted by an odd chiming noise. At once, they quiet.

“Well, that’s that,” the other Jemma says. “The walls here are fixed and we’ll be off.”

“I see,” Jemma says. Not truly knowing what to say in these circumstances, she offers, “It was nice to meet you.”

“You too,” the other Grant says brightly. “Good luck with the whole girlfriend/prisoner thing.”

“Thank you,” she says dryly.

“Good luck with, uh…” her Grant says, trailing off meaningfully.

“Thanks,” the other Grant sighs. “As you can see, I need it.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t understand that,” the other Jemma says with great dignity. Another cloud is forming beside her, swirling into slow existence just as inexplicably as the first did. “With any luck, the next universe will be better.”

“Yeah, maybe we’ll have a kid again,” the other Grant suggests cheerfully. “That’s always fun.”

The other Jemma raises her eyes heavenward. “I hate you so much.”

“No you don’t,” he asserts, and gives her a little shove toward the cloud. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”

With a sharp “ _Stop calling me sweetheart_ ” and an absent wave over their shoulders, they’re gone. They leave a strangely thick silence behind them.

“So,” Grant says eventually. “About that threesome she mentioned…”

“Daisy would kill you before you could even ask,” Jemma says. She fears her attempt at an annoyed tone is rather ruined by the smile she can’t hold back. “Don’t be absurd.”

“You can’t blame a guy for dreaming,” he says.

“No,” she agrees, and turns in his embrace to finally face him. “Or for his patience.”

Grant smiles. “Oh?”

“We still have things to work out,” she warns, not trusting the smugness in his expression. “Just because I’m willing to admit that I’m—”

“My girlfriend?” he interrupts.

“Not your prisoner,” she corrects. “You’re still the man who dropped me out of the Bus, kidnapped and tortured Bobbi, and started your own branch of Hydra.”

“And you’re still the woman who ran away with me anyway,” he says, smugly, and draws her in for a swift kiss. “We’ll get there.”

 _You’re still the man who brought me to a safehouse instead of your highly secure, well-fortified Hydra base_ , Jemma could say…but she doesn’t. He gave her time to face what she didn’t want to admit; she can certainly pay him the same courtesy.

“Maybe we will,” she says instead, and pushes up onto her toes for a _real_ kiss.


End file.
